Spiral
by sodakey
Summary: Maybe there was a reason Hell was defined in leveled circles. Loops. No way to move on or past or through. Struggle for nothing but another trip around the horn.
1. Chapter 1

**Excessive Author Notes: **

The plot is…old. The show's done it. I've done it. Everyone and their dog has done it. This isn't self deprecation, just honesty. It's a little forced writing practice for me. I won't expound on the writing points I was working on (this message has been boring enough) and I only point this out to stave off the inevitable "this has been done before" pm's. :D

This concludes your public service announcement. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

**Excessive Story Notes: **

This story assumes you are familiar with Supernatural, the universe, the characters, and the episodes. Spoilers abound, for anything and everything. And I do mean _anything_ and _everything_. The story won't be nearly as intriguing or make nearly as much sense unless you've actually seen the show, particularly the first and second season, though there are allusions to the third.

Set Season Two. Sometime after WIAWSNB, but before AHBL. Which means the characterizations and emotional tones are set there, not season three.

**Warnings:**

Excessive use of run on sentences. Mild language.

**Disclaimer:**

Just playin'

* * *

**Spiral **

©2008sodakey

* * *

Dean woke with a burn in his lungs and the hot taste of ash tickling his mouth.

_Fire!_ He thought, scrambling upright.

The knife under his pillow pulsed into his hand, and he was coughing and reaching for Sam before the cool-still darkness of the room seized him.

Hand hovering seconds from Sam's wrist, he straightened, carefully, turned his head right to left, pushing eyes into the shadows.

Nothing.

There was nothing.

He put his palm out, pressed it flat to the wall behind Sam's sleeping head. It came away cool.

Repeating the motion with the other walls brought nothing more than more cold and a pronounced shiver through his body.

When he opened the door to stare out at the parking lot, the wet rainy stretch of pavement was quiet.

"Dean?" Sam mumbled groggily.

Dean turned back into the room and shut the door with a cold click. The sensation of heat was gone, but the phantom taste of smoke sat acrid on his tongue. He coughed. "It's okay, go back to sleep."

"You alright?"

"Yeah."

Sam blinked. Slipping light and shadow crested the window, highlighting a rarely seen speck of gold in his right eye.

"Everything's fine."

"Fine?"

"Yeah."

"'kay." Sam rolled over, leg twitching and fidgeting before his breathing evened out.

Dean padded to the bathroom, unwrapping plastic from a tiny styrofoam cup to get water in his mouth. It was cold, tasted as keenly refreshing on his throat as glacier water, and he filled it again, twice, before making his way back to bed.

He lowered himself slowly, knees shaking, and rubbed a hand down his chest, testing the lingering soreness when he swallowed.

_Maybe I'm coming down with something_.

He sheathed his knife back beneath the pillow and stretched himself out.

_Maybe it was just a nightmare._

There'd been some, since the djinn. Frequent enough for Sam to notice, for him to fret with silent stares and head shakes, asking only once if Dean had told him everything. Dean had tried to answer, once. He'd tried to tell Sam there wasn't anything in the dreams that hadn't been there before, but, he'd jumbled his words, couldn't explain that the djinn hadn't added or taken away, just made the gap between asleep and awake yawn wider.

_It's no big deal,_ he monotoned to himself, repetitious fracture of a phrase that always stuck like glue somewhere behind his molars.

He was getting uncomfortably accustomed to new differentiations between myth and reality.

He didn't remember dreaming, this time, but that was okay. He didn't usually want to remember.

Restless, his eyes flashed to the ceiling, drab, plain, grey-white and empty.

He rolled over, closed his hand around the hilt of his knife and turned his head towards his brother, tracing his blurred outline through the dark.

Sam mumbled something in sleep, absently gripped his covers higher, settling deeper.

With a jerky motion, Dean used his left foot to scrape his own blankets away, bunching them at the end of the bed, burying just his toes under the weight, letting chilled dead air prickle over his leg hairs.

Cold was reality, more often than not.

Myth was warmth in opposing extremes and people telling him to _get some rest_.

Thunder grumbled, a deep growl overhead. Outside, the rain picked up. The steady wash of it against the window seeped over his senses and clashed against the rhythm of Sam's breathing.

Dean sucked in three shaky breaths of his own, forcing tension away.

Eventually, sleep returned. By the time morning appeared, Dean had shoved the incident into the box in the back of his brain stuffed with weird but unimportant things he never planned to talk about.

"IHOP?" Sam asked, zipping up his hoody.

Dean coughed lightly and reached for his own jacket. "Yeah."

"You getting sick?"

"Nah. Let's go."

Later that day, he noticed a nick in his finger he didn't remember getting, back of his third knuckle, the kind that usually came from working on the car but were never noticed until later. Dean would have passed it off as just that, except, he hadn't been working on the car. The Impala had been running smooth. Dean hadn't even cracked the hood to check the oil since their stop back in Dayton, two weeks ago.

He wound a band-aid around the cut with a frown.

By dinner it was scabbed over and forgotten.

* * *

It wasn't uncommon for Dean's joints to ache. The most consistent being his left shoulder. It stiffened up in cold weather, gave him fits after long runs, creaked and popped after sparring with Sam.

He was used to compensating.

But this ache was more, right and left, and all the nerves between.

It started small, then grew, spreading in a line from one shoulder to the other as he tried to get his shotgun up.

The poltergeist screeched, charging madly.

Dean fired.

The kickback walked the gun up on him, straining wrist and fingers, but he hit the target. The bright colors and angry mouth washed away on a wail.

He waited for the pain to follow suit.

It didn't.

Instead, the throbbing in his shoulders intensified, leaching down his wrists.

_What the hell?_

His fingers and hands were going numb and he was having trouble gripping.

_Hurry, Sam._

Dean hunched his back against the attic wall, bent his right knee, planted his foot flat back to brace. His left hand swagged useless, pinched and prickling. He ignored it and used his other to balance the gun on his bent thigh, pumped the shotgun and winced-gasped for the effort.

A tiny breeze fluttered the stale air, coaxing minute specks of dust to lift and spin.

The fine hairs on Dean's neck corded upright, just as a new wail invaded, hissing high.

The double paned windows on either side of the room started to shake, slow cracks spreading from the corners.

_Come on._

Both hands were purely pins and needles, his legs wobbled.

_Show your face, you bastard._

A red flare abruptly colored his vision, coinciding with a jagged dig in his side. His braced foot slipped. He banged back to the wall with a groan and skidded down to his butt, clutching the gun clumsily, blinking away the bright haze just as the ghost flashed in front of him, mouth twisting.

He tried to negotiate the shotgun's trigger with bloodless hands but couldn't get it.

"Saaam!" he yelled. "Hurry!"

"_Got it!_"

Dean heard Sam's muffled shout, heard something crash and shatter a floor below.

With a howl the ghost flickered, screamed, and disappeared.

The windows stopped rattling and the attic became motionless.

Quiet.

_Finally._

Dean let the shotgun clatter from his hands, slumping back.

Abruptly, he gasped, his shoulders jerked in protest and an unexpected new jab stabbed the side of his neck. Surprised, he lifted a numb hand to pat at it, frowning when it came down traced with blood. He swooned. Buzzing rose in his ears while flakes of grey shuttered his eyes, brain dancing light and then heavy.

"Dean?"

Sam's voice was a bright snap of reality. Dean sniffed, yanking himself back from the grey, walking his eyes towards the voice.

The attic door swung open and Sam filled the frame. "Dean?" He shot forward, kneeling down, tilting Dean's head to look at the blood. "Hey."

"It's nothing," Dean told him, mumbling, blinking wide, coughing to clear the croak from his throat.

Sam sat back on his haunches, scanning Dean head to toe with a blunt frown, circling his eyes around them, pointedly taking in the cracked but un-shattered windows and the dusty, graceful placing of unmoved, neatly cobwebbed furniture. His forehead crinkled as he reached back to Dean's neck.

Dean dropped his eyes, jerked his chin to the side, pulled his legs in and used the wall to make a play at standing.

Sam helped, gripping too tightly at his shoulders, frown deepening when Dean groaned.

"I'm good," Dean deflected.

The frown solidified, like one of those muppets whose mouths could open and close but never change shape.

Dean pulled free of his grip.

Sam gazed around the room once more, then bent to snag Dean's shotgun, checked the remaining bullet, jaw tilting down. "You weren't supposed to let it get that close to you. Did the gun jam? What happened?"

Dean shuffled to the door, feeling vaguely like he'd just been dragged through the woods and strung up by a wendigo. He flexed his hands, felt them sting from the idolum of ropes binding them high above his head.

"I don't know," he answered.

* * *

The ache was easing by the time they were back at the motel room, feeling returned to his fingers. Dean was convincing himself the whole thing wasn't really all that weird. For all their patterns and predictability, ghosts found new and exciting ways to kick their butts all the time, and this was just… that. Some weird, freak, poltergeist thing they hadn't counted on.

Sam caught him by the elbow as soon as they were through the door, gripped his jacket collar and peeled it down his back. He maneuvered Dean to sit on the end of the bed, tossed the med kit down by his hip, and reached to start on Dean's buttons, methodical and quick, like he thought Dean wouldn't give him trouble if he did it fast enough.

But Dean was fast enough. He caught one of Sam's wrists, gripped it harder than he thought he'd be able to. "Dude, I'm okay."

Sam had been dogging him since the djinn and hadn't yet let up, treating him carefully, touching his shoulder, patting his arm, a little too often, and a little too pointedly.

Sam kept his face neutral, his hands extended. "You're covered in scratches," he said, pressing a finger over something on Dean's forehead, worried eyes flicking down to the trace of blood at Dean's side. "Let me clean you up."

Dean lifted his free hand to touch where Sam's fingers had been, when he did, the muscles pulled across his back, spasming his shoulder. He winced, nostrils flaring as air zipped through his nose.

Sam settled his freehand at the base of Dean's neck, squeezing gently, eased his wrist from Dean's grip and kept going on the buttons.

"What exactly did the ghost do to you again?" he asked, after the cuts were dealt with and Dean was stretched out on the bed, holding a heat pack to one shoulder while Sam carefully rubbed down the other.

"I don't know," Dean said, once more, and tried to make it sound like it was no big deal.

* * *

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

Spiral 2

* * *

Sam made a habit of frowning over at him during the next few days. The muppet, fixed face, frown. Not like he was disappointed or annoyed, but like Dean was a jigsaw puzzle he hadn't made his mind up about putting together.

The shoulders were better. The scratches were healing normally. The small tears in his neck and side were on the mend.

It was nothing. Dean shrugged it all away.

And when a random bruise popped out on his thigh that he couldn't remember getting, he figured he must have walked into a table somewhere, or that he'd gotten it back with the poltergeist and it'd just been building below the surface.

He poked at it, flattened his hand over it while he stood in the shower, and tried to remember.

It felt like he should know where it came from. It felt like déjà vu and like it'd already been there.

The bathroom door opened with a rasp.

"You about done in here?" Sam called loudly.

Dean took his hand off the bruise and turned his body into the spray, letting it peel the remaining suds from his skin and beat a little more heat into his back. "Yeah."

"Good, Bobby's on the line."

* * *

"_Your brother tells me your last hunt threw you for a loop_."

Dean grimaced. "No, not really."

"_That right?"_

"Yep. Just your average angry spirit."

"_Sam says it attacked you, and that it didn't exactly follow the MO. You sure you didn't miss something?_"

Dean glared at Sam, who sat on the other side of the room pretending to look at his computer and not listen in. "Even if we did miss something, Bobby, it doesn't matter now. We've hung around, and the house is quiet. No trace of EMF. It's finished. We got it."

Bobby grunted, an aggravatingly doubtful sound.

Dean sniffed, reached into his open bag, and threw a pair of balled up socks at Sam's head. "Really, Bobby, we're fine."

And they were, for another few days at least.

There were a few things, a random cut on Dean's toe, a bruise on his knee.

He tried to convince himself that maybe he'd started sleepwalking.

* * *

Pain crashed onto him, rolling in hard and fast, squeezing down on more than just his head.

It was like everything inside him was trying to escape his body by pushing through his eyeballs. His lungs seized and he bit down on the inside skin of his lower lip. A moan slithered backwards over the roof of his mouth, rising high and humming out his nose.

"Dean?"

He sat up, shoving the blankets off his legs, stumbled to his feet and hit the ground between the beds on his knees.

"Hey!" Heavy hands wound over his ribs from behind, taut over his t-shirt. "What's going on?"

Dean's eyes ran wet. He couldn't talk. The pressure built and he tipped forward onto his elbows with a shattered grunt.

"_Hey_," Sam repeated, fingertips digging cloth into Dean's skin.

Then, just like that, it was over. Pressure winking away.

Dean panted, scraped himself away from Sam and staggered to the bathroom, shoving the door shut before he turned on the light.

"Dean." Sam banged, rattling the knob. "Open the door."

The washed out yellow in the room punched into Dean's eyes and he clenched them closed, groping blindly for the faucet.

Another fist from outside shook the plastic wood on its frame.

The water ran too hot. Dean cupped it onto his face anyway. When he tipped his chin up and squinted into the mirror, traces of dark running to watery copper streaked down from his lashes.

One more hard knock beat next to him.

Dean wasn't quick enough, and in the next second, Sam had the door open anyway.

They stood, staring wide at each other, eidetic expressions crystal sharp in the match of their eyes.

* * *

Sam swept the room for EMF and found nothing.

He took the mirror down from the bathroom and checked the back.

"Dude, I didn't say _Bloody Mary_ three times, and I was asleep when it happened," Dean carped. His eyes pulsed with a lingering sting that was making him snappish.

"Then what? Dude, this doesn't just happen." Sam waved his hands in the air, fingers looking long and brittle, like the stringy ends of broken peanut shells.

"I _don't_ know," Dean bit, rubbing his temples. "Would you stop yelling at me?"

Sam dropped his hands, going from aggravated to superable with a toneless thud, eyes stretched and a little panicked. "Could the djinn have something to do with this?"

"Why would it?"

"Before the poltergeist, the djinn is the most recent hunt we've been on. Maybe the… supernatural acid it gave you has side effects."

"When has that ever happened, Sam? The djinn is dead. When they're dead, they're done. It has nothing to do with this."

Sam stared. "Are you sure?"

_No._ "It's not the djinn, Sammy."

Sam rubbed restless fingers through his hair. "You don't know what it is, you just said. People's eyes don't just bleed, Dean."

"It's not the djinn."

* * *

Bobby knew of nothing, immediately off hand, that could make someone's eyes bleed spontaneously, beyond Bloody Mary and an invisible type of gremlin that fed on people's irises while they slept, but were thought to be extinct since the days of Samuel Colt.

Sam assured him Dean's irises were intact, and Bobby began asking all the other expected questions about where they'd been and what they'd been doing, then told them to come back to the salvage yard, since they were close, so they could figure it out from there.

Dean snagged the phone from Sam. "Bobby, this is stupid. It's nothing."

_"You feel okay?"_

"I feel fine."

"_Best be sure,"_ Bobby said calmly.

Sam yanked the phone back. "We're on our way."

_Damn it._

Dean resigned himself to it, because this was weird enough now not to ignore, until Sam hung up and told Dean he wanted him to see a doctor, just in case.

"No way." Dean's want for answers didn't go that far. His eyes hadn't started bleeding again, and the sting and heaviness that surfaced every time he blinked was nearly gone. In fact, the whole thing had lasted about as long as the actual Bloody Mary thing.

It was starting to feel like that should mean something.

Sam didn't push the doctor visit, but as they chucked their things in the car, he segued back to the poltergeist. "Maybe it did something more to you than we know. Something internal?"

"That's not it."

"How do you know? It jacked up your shoulders, scratched you up, and we still don't know how it did that."

"I don't think that was the ghost," Dean said.

Sam missed a step coming out of the room, rebalanced, and stared. "What? What do you mean?"

"Oh, god," Dean pleaded under his breath, to any deity that might hear. "Nothing. I didn't mean anything." He grabbed Sam's bag, thunked it into the trunk and snapped it closed, jangling keys out of his pocket as he headed to the driver's door.

Sam rounded the car's other side, folded his arms, dropped his eyes, eyebrows, chin and head, all forward in a dangerously patient stance.

Dean glanced, felt the fire, and darted his gaze skyward. "Fine. You're right. It was probably the ghost."

"The ghost is dead, you said so yourself. When they're dead, they're done." Sam leaned into the car, templed his hands on the roof. "So, what did you mean?"

Dean scratched the back of his neck, rolled his eyes, sucked his cheek in, and relented. "I mean, I don't think the ghost did it. It started while the ghost was there, but, even after I shot the thing, it didn't let up. Then you killed it, and it…" Dean made a rolling gesture with his hand, "…kept going."

"Crap, Dean." Sam ran a frustrated hand over his head as he pushed away from the car. "How about giving me a little freakin' information once in a while! I mean, dude, would it kill you?"

The blast of aggravation rocked Dean back a step, bunched his nerves and got him giving in to the defensive. "No, but it might make you freakin' walk off in the middle of the night."

Sam snapped his mouth closed, lips turning white, eyes lit bright with surprise.

Dean folded immediately, spreading a palm out. "I'm sorry."

A muscle trembled in Sam's neck, eyes woeful, and Dean deflated further.

"Really," he insisted. "I didn't mean that."

Sam dropped his gaze, shook his head, kicking at the ground. "Dean," he exhaled. It was a plea, and it sounded delicate, like fluttering hummingbirds, thin glass wind chimes, and exhaustion.

"I'm sorry," Dean said again.

Sam's jacket wrinkles smoothed as his chest filled, reappeared when he breathed out. But this sigh was deeper, more forgiving than the first. He rested his woeful eyes on Dean and stepped closer. "Anything else you're ready to spill?"

Dean thought about the fading bruise on his thigh, the soreness when he bent his elbow.

He thought about the long slender cut under his chin, spread at the end like a fan, a cut he didn't remember giving himself in the last few days, but one that felt and looked an awful lot like the one he gave himself last year, shaving with Sam's razor when his own electric one broke.

Maybe this _was_ something left over from the djinn, some old stretch of life coming back at him in a condensed alternative.

Maybe none of it was real.

Maybe a gaping wound in his chest would show up, where he'd stabbed himself with a knife soaked in lamb's blood.

* * *

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

Spiral 3

* * *

"So, near as you can tell, they're all injuries you've had before?" Bobby lifted his cap off his forehead, resettling it with the same motion.

From his sprawl on the caving-in-couch, Dean nodded. His shoulder was throbbing, but it was his usual shoulder this time, which made things seem oddly okay, even though the pain hadn't shown up naturally or normally, had banged in hard and fast as Sam knocked on Bobby's door, then started to dissipate just as quick.

A memory of St. Louis rolled out from crusted suppression. Being bashed into in the sewers by the shapeshifter, before he and Sam had split up. Before the thing had knocked him out, decided to wear his face, and frame him for murder.

If the current shoulder ache was from that, Dean figured he had some sleep time and a headache in his future.

"You ever hear of anything like this?" Sam asked. He was slumped in Bobby's easy chair, long legs kicked onto the coffee table, large book unfolded in his lap, dark line between his eyebrows.

Bobby grunted, but didn't answer Sam's question, refocusing instead on Dean. "They seem to be healing normally, and they're progressive?"

"Seem to be." Dean shrugged, wincing.

Sam frowned.

Bobby hummed.

Dean sat up straighter, smothering his grimace. "Comes every few days… sometimes quicker." No definitive pattern he'd caught onto. The smaller ones were more frequent, hours apart; sometimes less, sometimes more. They'd show up, fresh and sharp for seconds, then start to heal like normal.

Some of them Dean remembered, if he racked his brain enough.

The ache in his pinky was from jamming his finger playing basketball with Sam. The tiny burn on the side of wrist was from the waitress in Lubbock who'd spilled coffee on him when he'd smiled at her.

"Could it be a curse?" Sam flipped his book closed, jiggling his foot.

"Could be," mumbled Bobby, finger scraping at his chin while he stepped towards a bookcase. "Couple things we should look into."

Dean gripped his right hand harder over his left shoulder. The throb was almost gone.

He figured he should clue Bobby and Sam into what was coming next, but the world blackened with a painful thump before he got the chance.

* * *

"A reliving curse." Sam's voice was rough, edged and incredulous.

"Doesn't translate well, but yeah. And it's not exactly a curse. More like a… supernatural tripwire, just waiting for the right person to walk through it." Bobby's voice rumbled easily to Dean's ears.

"You think that's what this is? Dean walked into one of these tripwires?"

"There's lore all over the place of people reliving events or the same stretch of time. Repeating days. That sort of thing."

_Like a demonic Groundhog's Day?_

"Like a demonic Groundhog's Day?"

Dean shivered.

"Not exactly," Bobby murmured, the sound of turning pages followed by the reverberation of his throat clearing. "For one, Dean's not repeating a day, just reacquiring injuries. Two, he's not repeating the same injury, he's just moving on to the next."

"This is insane." Sam's shoes grated as they wore across the carpet, and though his eyes were closed, Dean could picture the anxiety laden wringing of Sam's hands. "We've been everywhere together, so why him and not me? And it's not like he's getting every injury he's had since birth, they're all from last year."

"Which is good," Bobby calmed. "That gives us a timeframe and a better chance to trace where it's coming from."

Dean was flat on the couch, feet kicked up on the armrest, a cool cloth on his head and a scratchy blue blanket tucked all the way up to his chin, like he was dying of the damn plague or something. It was better than waking up in a gutter, but did nothing for the hapless image he wanted to avoid.

"Bobby," Sam drew air through his teeth, a strained whistle under the draw, "some of the injuries Dean got last year… they should have killed him. If…"

"We best stop it before it gets that far."

Dean filled his lungs. The surge of air peeled a layer of fuzz from his brain. He shoved the blanket down to his waist and worked open his cottony mouth. "So, I'm going to keep repeating injuries until I learn to be the perfect brother, or what?"

* * *

"Before that?"

"Greensboro."

"After that?"

Dean unfolded his arms, rubbed at one of his eyebrows and glanced across at Sam. "White Plains?"

Sam stopped chewing his fingernail, bounced his knee, then nodded.

"White Plains," Dean said to Bobby.

Bobby tugged his thumb and finger over his earlobe, shoved another colored pin in the map on the wall, then bent back over the desk to flip another page in another book.

Abruptly, Sam unfolded from his chair.

Dean forcefully maintained his own casual lean against the wall, watching Sam beat a tired pace to the window and back.

"This isn't helping," Sam said. "They're all just places we've been, we're not seeing any patterns, none of this means anything." His eyes were dark underneath, tinged tired red where there should've been white.

"We should get some sleep," Dean decided. "We're talking ourselves in circles."

Bobby sighed, straightened and started to nod.

"No, we shouldn't, we shouldn't sleep." There was a frenetic edge to Sam's voice, reflective of the speed-like high he'd get from stressed out all-nighters in freakin' high school.

No guesses on what college finals had been like.

Dean came off the wall carefully. "Yes. We should."

"Dean's right," added Bobby, soft and authoritative.

Sam scrubbed his neck, stared at the floor, then layered a look down Dean's body.

Dean spread a palm out, pulled it back, curled his hand to rest four fingertips briefly below his sternum. "I'm good, Sam. Nothing's gonna happen between now and tomorrow. We have time."

Sam closed his mouth, gazed out the dark window for a long time, then nodded.

* * *

If Dean didn't drive the Impala, his next choice would have been the black GTO Bobby'd had on blocks in his back shed since Dean was seventeen.

The exterior was perfection. The engine, once rebuilt, would be poetry in motion. Every part from driveshaft to backseat upholstery was completely original. Bobby never went out seeking, he took parts as they came, restoring slowly. And, during the years Sam was gone, Bobby'd always waited for the Winchesters to drop by before dropping in the next find.

Dean figured it could be another ten years before any of them would take it for a test spin and there was something in that he liked. The idea that if you take what comes it'll all show up eventually. That if you take what comes, it'll all turn out how it's supposed to.

No rushing.

Patience and hard work.

Much better than sitting at the kitchen table making lists of people he might have pissed off enough to curse him. _And how do you make a list of everyone you've ever met when you can't remember half the names?_

He stretched himself underneath, just behind the front tires, checking what'd been done since he'd last looked, tinkering with nothing specific.

_Focus on the car, don't think of anything else. _

But it didn't work.

He'd made a big deal out of the bee stings on his butt the day before, way more than he had the first time.

"Flying up a man's pants. It's sacred."

"Whiner," Sam had shot, playing into Dean's mood while sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of books Dean and Bobby both had already been through.

"Can't blame them for the attraction, I guess," Dean had contemplated aloud, leaning against the counter sipping coffee.

"They were bees, Dean, they weren't thinking about how handsome you think your ass is." Sam had rolled his eyes and cracked the smile Dean was hoping for.

But it was weird, how the same injury in different circumstances changed things, and how it didn't.

He'd seen it in Sam, saw him disappear to that time for a moment, bonding with the bug boy, past resentments against Dad shaken by more recent regrets, now doubled.

Somewhere in the time since Dad died, Dean realized Sam had always wanted to be the good son. He'd just never known how to do it with Dad.

He couldn't be Dean; what he'd thought Dad wanted, what Dean knew was a myth anyway.

And what Dean had never said to Jo when she'd asked about the first thoughts of his Dad was that it wasn't just pride on his Dad's face when he'd nailed every can on that fence, it was realization that he had another weapon in his war.

Dean didn't want that for Sam. Not then, not ever. He wanted Sam to be Sam. Weapon in no one's war but his own. Vendettas and demon plans be damned.

Urging Sam to accept he was hunter way back when was…

It was…

There was something that'd always felt wrong about Sam off pretending, living with people who should love him, and probably did, but didn't know anything really real about him.

Dean hadn't lied to Sam, either, the last time they'd had that conversation in reverse. He was tired, exhausted for both of them. Tired of retracing the same ground again and again and again.

Thousand and one remixed repetitions of the same song.

_Screw the job. I'm tired of the job. And why is it always our responsibility?_

Always one strained step ahead of the next loss.

_Watch out for Sammy. The demon wants your brother…_

How the hell could he save his brother when he wasn't even sure what the threat was?

"Dean?"

He jerked, wrench slipping through his fingers.

A bump against his boot followed.

Dean rubbed a smudged finger over his eyelid. "What's up, Bobby?" he asked tiredly.

"Should you be out here alone?"

He wheeled himself from under the car and sat up, dug his heels into the dirt to keep from rolling forward when he leaned back against the frame. "No reason not to be."

Bobby's expression didn't change, never subtle with his thoughts.

"Whether Sam knows where I am or not, it won't change what's going to happen."

"And leaving him alone to wonder where you are and try to find answers by himself?"

Dean fingered the middle button of his brown plaid. "Sam doesn't need to be here for what happens next."

Bobby stayed silent.

Long enough for Dean to feel the edge of disapproval.

He looked up, stared unrepentantly back and didn't blink.

"What did happen?" Bobby asked, softy gruff, folding his arms, not put off in the slightest.

Dean tucked his chin down, leaned off the car, draped arms over his knees and rolled forward an inch, scratching a hand behind his head.

It was like he could feel this next one coming, warning pricking his spine. And Meg using Sam's body against both of them was too recent.

"Sammy shot me," he spoke to the ground.

What further proof was needed to show some ground was bound to be retread with or without demonic tripwires? And maybe there were reasons Hell was defined in leveled circles. Loops. No way to move forward. No way to move on or past or through. Struggle for nothing but another trip around the horn.

When it happened, Sammy was there anyway, yelling his name, catching him when the air punched out of him and the color behind his lids changed to a blue streaked haze.

_It was weird, how the same injury in different circumstances changed things, and how it didn't._

* * *

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

Spiral 4

* * *

Dean's ears were ringing, and he didn't know, he couldn't remember, what that should be from, or if it was from anything at all.

In forty bazillion books, they'd found about three dozen incantations conducive to laying out a supernatural tripwire, but only three that could take the resultant curse away, and then, only if chanted by the person who laid the trap in the first place.

And there were catches.

Always catches.

They didn't know if the second chant would take the injuries away, or just stop the progression of them—which, while not currently a big deal, was a technicality that could fast become an issue.

"Almost all of these are specific, only four aren't." Sam scribbled something in a notebook. "Odds are, whoever did this, laid it out specifically for Dean."

_Occam's razor._

"Where do you think this started, again?" Bobby drilled.

There were spiderweb cracks on Bobby's wall. Black and grey. Winding.

"Garrison," said Sam.

But Dean had been thinking. He'd been thinking what he'd thought was a nightmare maybe wasn't. And he'd been debating. "I think it started in Devil's Lake," he finally said.

Sam lifted his eyebrows. "The poltergeist was in Garrison. First injuries were the injuries from the wendigo." Sam had lists, and dates, and maps, compiled from days in Bobby's study. They'd been over this.

Dean blinked, slow and stiff, as he'd been since Sam had cleaned the blood away and checked his chest for traces of rock salt he didn't find.

The sharp crest of Dean's shoulder blades hurt. The back of his head. And the back of his right hand from hitting Sam.

He hadn't remembered to expect that.

"Nothing happened in Devil's Lake," Sam pressed, but it was more question than not.

Dean forced a cough, leaning his sore head back against the couch.

Sam frowned. "You had a slight cough for a day, but you're not repeating times you've been sick, just injured."

"I don't get sick," Dean mumbled. Which was true and not true. Passing colds passed him by. Violent stomach aches and hacking coughs stuck to him like glue.

Sam stood straighter, folding his arms.

Bobby had water stains on his walls also, warping the colors behind Sam's face.

Dean could see him thinking back to what'd come before the wendigo, and there wasn't much. Jumping off the bridge after being chased by Constance hadn't done much more than make him dirty. And the last real injury before that had been with Dad, gouge in the leg outside Sedona, three months earlier.

"Jessica," Sam dawned finally.

Smoke inhalation.

Fire.

And didn't it always come back to that?

Dean looked down at the beaten leather toes of his shoes and dug thumb and forefinger into his eyes.

This sucked.

* * *

Bobby and Sam spoke in hushed voices, like they actually believed Dean couldn't hear them from where he'd retreated to the porch steps.

"Maybe it has something to do with me. Maybe I tripped the wire. Maybe this is my curse, not his… maybe…"

"Maybe."

"It has to mean something, right? That this started with… the fire? With Jessica?"

There was a long pause and, when it finally came, a grumble and roll under Bobby's answer. "A lot of things started with that fire."

"Maybe it's the demon," worried Sam. "Could it be the demon?"

* * *

There were cracks in the Impala's walls also. Streaks. Down the sides. On the roof.

There when Dean blinked.

Gone when he didn't.

There'd been no streaks when he'd rebuilt her. No cracks.

They weren't real. They couldn't be. Exhaustion and being beat-to-hell playing tricks with his head.

And did Dad ever really play softball?

"Hey." Sam hunkered in front of him, rubbing hands down his jeans, heavy sigh bearing down the word.

The day was all cloud cover, but the sun had run far enough west to escape it, stretching light and color across the underside of grey.

Bright.

Dean blinked to see Sam's face. "Hey."

"Bobby's going to drive, alright?" Sam was thrumming, constant nervous energy now, so that even when he was still, he wasn't. The illusion of static crawled over his skin, open mouth ready to release a procession of explanations and assurances, eyes darting from house to Impala, to sky, to…

Dean put a hand on Sam's shoulder, kneading fingers into the muscle.

Sam looked at him, startled.

"Take it easy."

Sam closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and nodded. "We should get going. You ready?"

"Yeah." Dean looked back at the Impala. Intact. No streaks. Shimmering black. Maybe a few pock marks above the grill.

"I should touch up the Impala," he said, letting go of Sam's shoulder, "before she rusts."

* * *

The road was a hum and a beat and a rhythm.

Dean passed out before they cleared the state line. When he came to, he had a lump on his forehead, his ears were still ringing, and he was gripping the dark threads of a dream where he'd been staring down at his own body, watching while his corpse was tied to an apple tree and stabbed by a scarecrow.

An echo of indistinct images beat through his temples.

He sniffed, yanked his mind from the sticky hollow of black edged nightmares and lifted his head.

Sam's long arm kept him from sitting up, stretched into the backseat to grip his collar, handing over a cold Coke can to hold against the bump.

Dean felt like a kid, laid out in the back, watching shadows and clouds dash past the windows. Treetops and power lines, one after another, gapped then steady, gapped then steady, blurring by.

Sam swiped a large hand over Dean's head, concerned eyes boring down from somewhere above, a giant staring over a wall into his tiny village.

Dean thought about it, and figured he hadn't been in the backseat of his own car since the last time he died.

* * *

"Insanity and stability are dependent only on perspective, and the ability to accumulate a set of facts in conjunction with someone else's."

Dad had said that.

Corner table of a dive outside Jackson Hole. Two weeks after Cassie. One of those conversations that'd been about everything and nothing at the same time.

Thing was, Dean was used to his world view not factually fitting anyone else's. Sometimes, not even his dad's or his brother's. Which meant he also knew sanity and stability were sometimes defined by just keeping your mouth shut.

And it made him wonder, if it ever happened, how he'd really know if he'd gone crazy.

He'd wanted to ask, sitting the span of a splintered wood table from his father, but the question drowned in his throat with the tip of a long-necked beer, washed back with all the other stuff he'd gotten used to not saying.

He'd swallowed, stared out at a too-sober crowd, away from John's border-drunk glower.

_Maybe I am nuts. Maybe I've always been._

John had slammed his palm against the table, loud crack that'd rattled the base and toppled a bottle. It'd smashed on the red cement floor, scattering glass like confetti.

"Talk, damn it."

_Which is worse to lose in a war? The soldier or the general?_

"Take it easy on him, Sam."

"Dean, look at me."

_That's an order, son._

Dean tipped his head up. Sam was inches from his face, hands wound in his shirtfront.

"Hey, you with me?"

Dean nodded. "Sorry." He cleared his throat. "What?"

Sam stared, then rolled his head to the right. "I don't remember this, Bobby. We should take him to the hospital. Now."

The Super8 in Devil's Lake was close to the hospital, and they'd picked it for that reason. It had drab red bedspreads. Not bright, but they hurt Dean's eyes. He pushed against Sam's hands. "I'm okay."

Sam didn't move, and his eyes didn't change. They were worried about something. Something that hadn't happened yet.

Electrocution.

They were worried about an electrocution, Dean remembered. And it _had_ happened, once. He remembered it'd hurt like a mother—

"Think he's just worn out," said Bobby. "Everything together like this."

_Stop talking about me._

Sam started nodding. "Okay. Okay," he agreed, easing his clutch in Dean's shirtfront, eyes earnest. "You should get some rest."

_No._ "The tripwire," he said. Was this his curse or Sam's? His brain felt fogged, condensation covering the synapses.

The fists in his shirt tightened again as Sam tipped him back. "Bobby and I got it covered."

Dean caught the hem of Sam's shirt. "No," he mumbled.

"Try," Sam insisted.

And Dean had to because he couldn't keep his eyes open. _Why can't I keep my eyes open?_ "Maybe I'm crazy," he thought.

"You're not crazy," Sam whispered, an echoey voice from far away.

Standing next to Jess with a warm arm around her waist.

"_You were happy_."

But he didn't think Sam had said that.

Dean didn't think Sam had ever said that.

* * *

_Can't save him if you're dead, Dean._

Dad flicked ash off his shoulder, boots kicked up on the black top of a burnt-out table, casual tip of his chair against the wall of a splintered and burning cabin. _Gonna just leave Sammy to the demon? Thought I trained you better than that._

Heat from the fire snaked over Dean's arms. He opened his mouth, and felt his throat lock.

_This is a dream._

Dad shook his head into Dean's silence. His boots thunked creaking floorboards in disappointment as he stood and went away, leaving Dean trapped with fire raining down from what should have been heaven.

Layla and Marshall Hall appeared also, through gaps and stretches of real and fake.

And Sam.

Sam fighting.

Sam running.

A pyre with Dad's body and Sam crying.

Dean was a chained corpse to Sam's side, useless tubes running out of his body, watching Sam struggle from too far away.

The Sam in his dreams kept trying to give his corpse a loaded gun.

_I need you to watch out for me, Dean._

_Dad said so, you have to._

Dad was supposed to be here.

Dean was supposed to be dead.

And in the dreams, Dean talked to a dark-haired girl with panicked yellow eyes. She told him it was his lucky day, and he wondered if it really was.

He wondered, had he lost a war for living?

* * *

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

Spiral 5

* * *

"You were willing to die," said Sam, solemn whisper into dark nothing, "the first time."

Dean swallowed, throat dry-raw, like burnt leather. The faint taste of copper was glued to his teeth.

When he opened his eyes, the ceiling above looked washed out and unreal.

Sam had a hand on his shoulder.

His right shin ached. Like he'd been kicked a hundred times. How many times did he bang his shin in a year? Bump a rock or hit his leg funny on a door? _Shouldn't be that many._ He sucked back a tiny moan.

Sam's fingers smoothed lightly over his collar, tapping his clavicle. Dean rolled his head a fraction to the right. His brother sat against the headboard, arm locked around drawn knees, sharp-edged chin jutting into light, glitter and glue, black construction paper with shapes sliced so only light could show the truth of them.

The light shifted as Sam's broad shoulders tipped forward, highlighting the washed-out color of his eyes and the dark line between them, determined and afraid. The toe of Sam's left sketcher jerked up and down, laces casting shadow puppets on the wall. His shoes were untied.

_What, you protect me? That's hilarious._

Dean blinked, slow, eyelashes sticking. He dragged teeth over his lower lip and cleared his throat. "Where's Bobby?" His tongue felt like burnt coffee, stuck three days dry on the bottom of a coffee pot.

"Out," Sam answered, absurdly soft. "How're you feeling?"

Dean sniffed. The smart smell of sage hit high in his nose, just below the tear ducts. He held his breath on a sneeze, put his palms flat against the mattress, drew his elbows in and pushed.

"Easy," Sam helped cautiously.

Teeth sucked tight together, Dean closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall. "Better," he answered.

Sam looked away, saying nothing. Light shivered across the sudden flex of his jaw, turning the jump of skin bright gold.

Digging slow fingers into the pocket of his right eye, Dean gave the room a bleary scan. Lightly smoking smudge sticks were strung from each corner, wafting white spirals over a disabled smoke detector. "Mugwort?"

"Silver sage."

Dean shifted his eyes tiredly. "Not asking for genus and phylum, Sam."

Sam surprised him with a soft half-laugh, a short burst that triggered a warm skip in Dean's chest. For a second, Dean couldn't breathe.

"Purification. It's supposed to slow down the effects of the curse," Sam explained, rubbing the flat of his hand over his knee, patting lightly, nod tight. "We hope."

Dean drew a cautious breath.

Books and papers sat stacked on the nightstand behind his brother and on the tiny table beyond. A collection of maps and pictures controlled the wall.

Sam tracked his gaze. "We're close, Bobby thinks. We just need a little more time." He waved a hand at the soft smoke. "It just has to buy us a little more time." His fingers rested back on Dean's shoulder, brief and shuddery quick.

_Who are you trying to convince?_

"We're _close_, Dean."

Dean's throat narrowed, echoes of dreams slithering through his head. _Gonna just leave Sammy to the demon? _

The silence between them dragged.

Sam folded his knees down, shifting to face him more fully. He looked pale. He looked tired. His right eye looked redder than his left. "You were talking in your sleep," he measured, deliberate and delicate. Gold now lit on the back of his ears.

Dean dragged a trembly-cold finger over one eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah." Sam leaned forward. "You were. You…"

Dean coughed, moved, poured his legs off the bed so his feet thunked heavy on the floor. Back to his brother, he balanced elbows on knees and put his head in his hands.

Sam followed, scrambling softly to his side, hooking heels in the wedge between mattress frame and mattress, hunching forward to look at Dean's face. Like a bird on a wire. His expression was Dad and Mom, skinned knees and incessant questions Dean had _never_ known how to answer.

Sam rocked his jaw, catching the inside of his cheek with his teeth, closing a worry-warm hand on Dean's shoulder. "Hey."

Dean looked away, stood, and felt the dizzying head rush before he was even halfway up.

"Whoa." Sam stood with him, catching firmly under his elbow, other fist wrapping in the material at his waist. Gentle. Solid as stone. "Dean, I'm not trying to—"

"Don't. Just, don't."

Sam shut up, but he didn't move. Steady. Patient.

Dean swallowed thickly.

His baby brother wasn't evil.

His baby brother could never be evil.

* * *

_What did you see in my heart?_

Roy had sounded like he knew what he was talking about. _A young man who has a job to do… and it isn't finished yet._

Dean had wanted to believe it, even after they figured out how Sue Ann was killing people.

_Watch out for Sammy._

He hadn't meant to be willing to die. But there'd been… something. Relief. Knowing the end. Knowing it was no longer up to him. He'd wanted to be finished. Hadn't he given enough?

"It can be connected to a nexus or life force to have continued power," Sam's voice invaded. "They can sustain or trade life force levels."

Dean bit his cheek and cocked his head.

Sam was reading aloud, something about talismans, trying to fill Dean in on what'd been figured out while he'd been sacked out on the bed, out of place and useless.

"A talisman also can be considered to be a magnet designed to attract desired circumstances," his voice droned.

Dean bent, splashed cold water on his face in the fluorescent glow of a blue bathroom. He felt like he was moving in a fog. Felt like he'd been walking days dehydrated in a desert. Thoughts so here and there he kept forgetting where he was. The slowly gathering sage smoke wasn't helping, but Sam wouldn't let him open a window, rants about death wishes and _I don't scare easy_ sitting visibly in his throat.

Even now, Dean could tell Sam was struggling to read around them, making his reading voice sound gravelly and determined.

"Talismans are structural links to energies that can trigger specific actions, or trigger specified results, by linking an object or place to this trend energy through the rituals of chanted mantras, sacred fires, or other ceremonial constructs."

Dean twisted the water pressure higher, ducked farther, cupped a handful of cold and rubbed it over his scalp.

His ears wouldn't stop ringing.

When he looked up, the man he saw in the mirror seemed like a stranger. Same clothes, same hair, but the face was sallow and shadowed, bruised, lower lip split and crusted in two places.

_I used to look like Dad_.

He once did, he thought. Mom and Dad both, but in all the opposite ways from Sam.

"So the curse was set up with a talisman," Dean said, watching the reflection's mouth move, hearing his voice come out sort of shaky, monotone everywhere else. _I didn't want to be willing to die. _

But he had been.

And he should've.

Then Dad would've never…

Most of the time, Dean figured he'd made the wrong wish to the djinn.

"Looks like," Sam responded, closing the book. "Bobby says all we had to do to trigger the curse was get in range of the thing."

"What's the range?"

"Miles."

Dean ducked once more, scrubbed two palmfuls of water over his head, straightened up and turned off the tap. "I thought talismans were supposed to bring _good_ luck."

Sam leaned his shoulder into the doorframe. His head almost touched the top arch, hair brushing wood as he reached behind Dean and handed him a towel, eyes flickering down to the pendant on Dean's chest. "They are," he said, backing off, rubbing a finger up between his eyes. "And for whoever's doing this, it's brought very good luck. Talismans can act as magnets, remember?" Sam tapped the book. "Think about it. Why did we even drive through Devil's Lake?" There was a bloodless thrum in his voice, taking out all the coldness and all the heat. He lifted the book, rubbing the spine against his forehead.

_One man's pleasure is another man's pain. _

_Where did I read that?_

Abruptly, Sam drew the book back and chucked it against the far wall. It broke off the spine, scattering paper in rushed whirls.

Dean stood still, water dribbling down his face and neck, leaking into the collar of his shirt as the paper settled. He watched Sam's chest heave, tightened his fingers around the towel in his hands and tried to keep his voice even. "Why Devil's Lake?" he asked.

Sam's nostrils flared. He leaned back against the molding, eyes on his toes, breathing deep.

"Sammy," Dean started, reaching fingers forward. _I don't know what to say to you._

Sam waved a hand, closing his eyes. "I don't know why Devil's Lake," he said. "There are legends about a demon that once lived in the lake and another one about a leak at the bottom where boiling water came up from a hole in Hell, but, nothing solid to either Bobby or I could find. Nothing that has to do with this that we can tell."

Dean dropped his eyes, finally lifting the towel to scrub over his face.

His left shoulder spasmed, pulling tight across his chest, left arm going numb. He gasped, dropping the towel, pulling his arm into his body.

Sam jerked forward, expression horrified, hands clutching.

"Just my shoulder," Dean beat out, biting down on his lip, trying to pull back.

Sam watched him, grip painful, eyes wide. He let go slowly.

Dean flexed his fingers, feeling a collection of strained muscles toe down his back. "Just my shoulder," he repeated, teeth tingling. His chest tightened when he said it, skip of his heart feeling two seconds too slow. He cursed low, under his breath.

_This is ridiculous._

It was all in their heads, anyway. He wouldn't get the warning of a numb arm for his heart attack. Pending electrocution didn't come with building cold sweat and some crap like the smell of roasted almonds or whatever.

Just… bang, fire, rip.

* * *

"Dean," said Sam, fingers closing over his shoulder.

Dean blinked, looking up. Bobby stood grim-faced at Sam's shoulder. Dean hadn't even heard him come in. He rubbed a hand over his face, leaning back in his chair, dislodging Sam's hand. _Good, Dean, keeping checking out. _"I'm okay."

"Dean."

"I am."

Sam straightened with a sigh.

Bobby said nothing. He used two fingers to dig something from his shirt pocket, dropping it lightly in Dean's lap.

Dean stared, then picked it up, touched the rough bumps and sharp edges with tentative fingers. Twig, twine, and wire. Blue cloth, several strands of blond hair wound over and throughout. "Talisman," he said dully.

"Yep." Bobby folded his arms across his chest.

Sam reached, taking it from Dean's hands and peering. "How did you find it?"

"Place of power and a place of death," Bobby intoned.

That sounded familiar, Dean thought. Maybe he'd read it, or Sam had read it to him. Ritual consecrations or something. Probably from the book now scattered on the floor.

"It was at the cemetery?" Sam pressed.

"Groundskeeper told me someone lit a fire behind the church about a month ago. I scanned around and got lucky. Scorch marks still on the ground—perfect circle." Bobby pointed. "Found that bugger buried in a box less than a foot down, dead center." He rubbed a hand behind his neck, looking at Dean, eyes ticking up and down like they were searching for something.

"What?"

"You get anything else while I was gone?"

Dean resisted the urge to rub his shin or knead his sore shoulder. "Don't think so."

Bobby sighed, nod curt. His eyes flickered between Sam and the broken book in the corner. "Good," he said carefully.

"Bobby," Sam cut in, lifting up the talisman. "This is a yantra."

Bobby nodded. "Yep."

Dean rocked his chair forward, dragging the talisman back from Sam's hand. Tracing the folds of wire over wood, looking closer to find what Sam was talking about. After staring a moment, he found the written mantra, etch marks carved precisely into the bark. Symbols. "Are these Greek?"

Sam leaned over his shoulder. "Yeah. Payment. Complete. Initiate," he deciphered, pointing. "Bobby, what happens if we scratch through it? Won't that stop it?"

"No. It has to be re-chanted by whoever wrote it on there. They have to scratch through it, break it, burn it, whatever, but it has to be them."

"There's always a way to counter someone else's spell. Bobby, you're the one that told me that."

"Not that we've found, Sam. Our best bet is to find who did this, and be real convincing about our invitation to undo it."

Sam sniffed, twisting the talisman, head bending down. "Dean, this has your name on it."

Bobby adjusted his cap. "Yeah, it does." He leaned forward, fists on the table. "Think, Dean. The blue cloth, the hair in there. This is personal. You've got to have some idea who could've done it."

Sam plucked at one of the blond strands, eyebrows creased.

Blond hair and blue cloth. What the hell was that supposed to tell them? Blond wasn't exactly a limiting qualification. Dean'd known more than a few blonds. More than a few that'd liked blue, and green, and everything else. But none with more than the average grudge against him and none that would even know how to do something like this. Except…

He swallowed.

"Dean?" Sam started.

Dean's eyes met Bobby's.

Bobby pursed his lips.

Dean felt a pit roll heavy in his stomach.

He'd never called Jo back after she'd dug that bullet from his shoulder back during Sam's possession. She'd helped him, been worried, ready to help, and he'd thought she'd understood it wasn't Sam. Asking him if demon's ever told the truth. A kid wannabe hunter, twirling her dead father's tiny knife.

But Dad had been a freakin' _Marine_, and a sonuvabitch hunter from day one. He didn't get jumpy. And there was no slip up John Winchester could've made to get Bill Harvelle exposed, not when the man was playing bait. Bait _was_ exposed, that was bait's job. And Dean was pretty sure his dad hadn't forced the man to be bait. Hadn't put a gun to his head. At least not till later. If Meg had told Sam the truth about that one.

And that part, Dean did buy.

Because Dean wasn't the only hunter who'd ever drawn the short straw. And maybe quick was better than slow if you knew death was coming.

What business did a man with a little girl in pigtails have hunting anyway? _His_ wife hadn't been killed by a demon. Jo hadn't lost _her_ mother. They weren't Winchesters.

Dean clenched his fist around the talisman, sharp edges biting into his skin. Even so..._ Jo wouldn't… she wouldn't.  
_

The lights in the room changed colors, roiling blue and clouded red, and that was all the warning Dean had.

Just… bang, fire, rip.

* * *

tbc


	6. Chapter 6

Spiral 6

* * *

He dreamed of white shadows and black whispering hallways.

Hands clapping over lightning bugs. Slimy light, then darkness.

And he dreamed of Sam's voice, urgent, repeating, flashing burnt orange behind his eyelids.

* * *

_What's his name?_

_Dean. His name's Dean._

_Can you hear me, Dean? _

_Dean? _

* * *

There was a ticking sound under the whispers, like a clock underwater. Like a slow beating heart.

The sound followed shuddering flashes of light, revealing faces fading in and out of dim shadows. One face stood out more distinct than the rest. Withered. Expressionless. Attached to an immaculate suit.

Tilting steadily closer in the clicking light, feet soundless on the cracking floor.

* * *

_What happened?_

_Dean?_

_Kid looks like he's been tortured._

_Get out of the way, let us work._

* * *

The ticking sounded more urgently, speeding the flashes, drowning the whispers. A burst of brilliant light turned everything white. Followed by a dark snap.

Then silence.

He felt warmth. Like floating. Like good dreams that don't last. Like falling asleep in the world of the djinn.

* * *

_He's my brother._

_Sam, let them work._

_Sam._

_Please. Dean. Please._

* * *

"It doesn't have to be your responsibility, Dean." The voice echoed in the dark quiet, trailing a burnt sienna glow as it grew closer.

"_Mom?_" The word sounded thin in the dim, but felt like magic, increasing the glow.

"You were never meant to fight this long," he heard, resonating deep. Then she was there. Kind face, concerned eyes, gown like a cloud. As she always was, frozen in memory and time. Everything he and Sam had never had.

"Am I dreaming?" he whispered. _Am I dead?_ A yes-no hollow opened in his chest.

She reached a hand to cup his face. "Does it feel like a dream?"

He rocked his head down, feeling the press of delicate fingers through his hair. "The djinn didn't feel like a dream either," he whispered.

"And you wanted to stay."

He said nothing, holding his breath and feeling, just feeling.

"Dean," she said softly, "my Dean." Fingers drifted down to his cheek, warm and dry. He closed his eyes, leaning in, felt his breathing slow. Peace.

Behind his lids surfaced a sudden flash of fire, John Winchester in the center, stoic and determined, gone before he could yank his eyes open.

He jerked back, darting eyes around the empty space.

"Dean," said Mary, confusion on her face.

He stared back at her, felt a painful sharpness in his heart. "This isn't real." But it felt real, as real as anything else he'd felt or believed. _Maybe I'm crazy._

"You're not crazy," she whispered, touching his face again, voice tender. She sounded like Sam.

There was no knife soaked in lamb's blood, nothing in reach he could use to tell himself yes or no, but the phantom memory jabbed at his heart.

"You just need to rest."

"Sammy," he said, question or answer, neither, both. The name echoed back at him before being swallowed by the dark.

Mary moved, traced her finger down his jaw, eyes knowing. She sighed and stepped back.

"Mom."

"It wasn't ever supposed to be you, Dean."

A new voice.

He turned, saw a woman with dark hair and wide eyes, familiar and strange. When he looked back, his mother was gone. "Where'd she go?"

The woman didn't answer, standing serene, watching him calmly. "You should rest, Dean. You can't borrow time forever."

"Who are you?"

"Someone you've spoken to before."

Down the dark hall behind her, a surge of red grew, a flickering flash through the corner of his eye. His father in chains and on fire. Gone before he could blink. Flashing, disappearing once more. "Dad?" He turned, searching, heart pounding. "Dad?" He looked back at the woman, so familiar, like a friend, like an enemy, and he didn't know which. "Where did they go?"

She stepped closer, smiled sadly, and started to fade.

His heart beat harder.

Behind her the hallway grew longer and more distinct. It started whispering again. Recognizable whispers this time. Voices he knew. Pastor Jim's and Bobby's and Caleb's. Sammy's. Mom's and Dad's.

His own.

Time stamps. Jumbled and out of order.

_Why is it always our responsibility?_

_You and me, we're all that's left._

_I'm gonna die, and you can't stop it._

_We were just starting to be brothers again._

_Don't be scared, Dean._

_I know what you'd say. Not the you that played softball you_…

_Nothing but rest, and love…_

A loud clap cracked over the voices.

Then nothing.

* * *

A halo of moving gold warped over Dean's vision when he opened his eyes, like tiny translucent angels were dancing in circles above him. They moved with flashing grace when he shifted, leaping wherever his gaze took them.

When they leaped left, Sam was sitting behind them. Head bowed, hair drooping, hands clenched between stiff knees, thumbs worrying around each other.

Dean stared quietly until the tiny angels stopped moving, stared as they faded to opaque copper then disappeared, leaving yellow sparks over his brother's hair. He stared until he thought he could feel the sterile beeping oppression of the room from Sam's perspective. Life frozen in sepia, afraid if he moved anything other than his thumbs, time would catch up with them.

The room smelled like sage, like the smudge sticks strung in the Super8 but sharper, cleaner.

No smoke.

Dean licked his lips, touching the tip of his tongue to dry teeth. "Hey," he croaked. The word emerged cracked and indistinct.

Sam's head rocked up, eyebrows lifting, eyes widening. "Hey," he answered, warmth in his voice, unclenching his hands, folding his lips together. He braced palms on knees as he stood, scattering the yellow sparks, stepping smoothly up to the bed, projecting a false calm Dean could've picked off from Mars. "How're you doing?"

Dean snorted lightly. The dancing angels returned abruptly, speeding around his head, trailing black footprints. He clenched his eyes and swallowed tight.

"Sorry, dumb question," Sam mumbled, edged with a hint of affection, and grief.

"Where's Bobby?" Dean asked. Or thought he asked. Wobbly and tall, hazy Sam stared down at him with a furrowed brow, like he wasn't sure Dean had spoken. "_Bobby_," he said again, pulling a deep breath from the oxygen tube in his nose.

"Bobby?" Sam questioned softly. "He'll be back in a minute."

Dean sniffed.

"He's filing a police report. You got attacked by a gang of pissed-off bikers. We're not sure what all they did to you."

"They buy it?" Dean whispered, drawing more air.

Sam shrugged and looked away. "The doctor thinks…" he paused to swallow, stared down at his toes, shoved hands in his jacket pockets. "The doctor says you look like you've been tortured." He stared out the window over Dean's head, shaking slightly, like he hadn't slept, or eaten, for an eternity.

Dean coughed, felt his brain turn cloudy, and tasted old blood sticky in his throat.

"Dean?"

He peeled his eyes open, fixed them on the ceiling. Grey ceiling, edged in brown. Aged. Less like the hospital after his last heart attack and more like the one after the car accident. He flicked his eyes away from it, and thought,_ Guess you're leaving town without me_, and_, hey, you'd better take care of my car or I swear I'll haunt your ass. _

He clenched his teeth to keep from speaking.

Sam reached to awkwardly pat at his arm. Several long minutes later, he spoke, tone rough and controlled, grip tightening. "Do you remember how I was trying to be after Dad died?"

Dean rolled his head, breathing deep to make the wobbly outline of his brother solidify.

"Like all… trying to make up for… stuff."

Old words tumbled through Dean's mind. _Now you want to make it right? Well, I'm sorry, Sam, you can't. It's too little, too late. _"Sammy," he breathed, trying to catch his brother's eyes.

"Do you remember?" Sam pressed.

Dean flashed back to Sam's white face. _Why are you saying these things to me?_ Like he hadn't been able to reconcile cruelty from Dean. Or truth.

Yeah, Dean remembered. He gave a small nod and sucked more oxygen through his nose.

"How I was acting back then? I wasn't… it wasn't just 'cause Dad was gone. And it wasn't just 'cause I'd started to pick a fight with him before… before he…"

"Sam," Dean tried again. He jerked his wrist, feeling the pull of the IV. Streamlined incoherency. _Pain in the ass, painkilling poison_.

"When you were in the coma, we argued about you, you know? About how to help you. Dad… he said that if I'd killed him when I had the chance, you'd've been awake. And I told him… I told him… to go to hell."

"Sammy," louder this time, but his ears started ringing.

Sam sniffed, freed a hand from his jacket pocket, rubbed the back sleeve under his nose, and kept going. "And then after… when he saved you? I knew that was probably where he was… where he _is_. In hell. And I missed him. I miss him. And I didn't want him… I don't want him… there… but… but I was still glad it was him instead of you." His voice broke, a sound halfway between sob and laughter. "What kind of son does that make me?"

_A Winchester one._

Dean jerked his head up. _Sam. _The name stuck in his throat, black edging his vision.

Sam's fingers circled his arm securely. His voice grew stronger. "I'm not okay with this, Dean. When you were electrocuted before, it was like you were okay with it. I wasn't. I won't ever be. Got it?"

The words hit strangely, irritating the fine hairs on Dean's arms, the back of his neck. _You're scaring me._ He shook slightly, felt a tear in his chest, a hole in the ozone. _Don't, Sam. Don't do anything stupid._ Somewhere nearby, monitors beeped. Farther away, a squeaky cart clacked across linoleum. A raspy call over an intercom said something about intensive care.

"Don't you give up, okay?"

_Don't be scared, Dean._

_Damn it, Sammy. _"Wait."

Sam let go of him, not waiting for the answer, whispering now, like maybe he thought Dean wasn't all that conscious anymore. He pulled something from his pocket. A small vial. Dean smelled sage when Sam uncapped it, bright, turning his vision white.

"I think I've found something to help you," Sam continued, tilting the oil onto his thumb, lifting a shadowy hand to trace liquid across Dean's scalp. "Bobby will be back in a minute. He'll stay with you. He'll be here. Okay?"

Did Sam know who was doing this? Had anyone tried calling Jo?

Dean blinked his eyes wider, jerked his hand again. It felt wrong. Whatever Sam was saying, it felt wrong. He needed more info, needle and thread to sew the rip in his chest. _Wait._

Sam's thumb stroked back across his forehead, rough over his eyebrow. "You're going to be okay, Dean." Voice stubborn. Hand cold, ice and cracking glass, pieces falling away.

_Where are you going, Sam? _

"Nowhere, Dean."

_Bobby?_

Dean blinked, but he didn't see Bobby. Sam was standing several feet away, jacket gone. Like magic, Dean thought hazily. Maybe this was all just magic. Real and fake. Mind jumbled with impossible things. Jo as a killer. Sam putting a ring on Jess's finger. The world upside down. He couldn't tell the difference anymore. "Sam?" He felt warm, toes and fingers tingling. "Sam? Did you leave?"

Sam glanced over. "Easy, Dean."

He blinked again, opened his eyes, and couldn't see Sam anymore at all. There was a voice that sounded like his, blending with one that sounded like Bobby's. Low murmurs and fast whispers.

Dean sniffed deep, coughed twice. The ceiling tilted.

A hand settled on his shoulder. "Hang on, Dean." Sam's voice, clear and loud before it started to fade. "I'll be… going… Bobby… okay? Just rest, Dean—that's all you have to do."

"Rest?" he whispered.

"Yes. Just rest." Sam sounded like Mom.

When he opened his eyes again, the room was empty.

_Rest. Just rest._

It sounded good. But every time Dean blinked, Dad was burning in hell for nothing.

Sam was five years old, asleep in the room with a shtriga on its way.

Dean was leaving the building to play video games.

_I just want you to know, I am so proud of you._

_Don't be scared, Dean._

Dean swallowed. _You son of a bitch. You liar._ He reached carefully, with his far hand, and slowly, very slowly, pulled the IV from his forearm. Wherever Sam was going, it wouldn't be alone. Whatever Sam was doing, it wouldn't be without his brother.

Dean knew… he'd made mistakes with Sam. Lots of them. But, God help him…

_Brother_ was still the most sacred word he knew.

* * *

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

**Spiral 7**

* * *

_Come on, Dean. Come on. Come on, come on, come on come on come on come on…_

Standing was a challenge. Standing was a chore.

The lack of intravenous drugs cleared the fog from Dean's brain, but a remaining dizziness tied itself around his head and slithered down his neck. It wound over his lungs and wrapped around his heart. It was cold and refused to move.

He tried to wait it out once he was upright, sitting steadily with legs dangling off the bed, breathing in oxygen through the tube in his nose. Slow, deep breaths.

_No big deal_.

He'd forgotten what this was like, breathing and moving with a damaged heart.

_Not a problem._

He'd forgotten that this was as good as he was going to get.

_This is nothing_.

The shadowy aura around his vision was permanent.

The tingling in his feet wouldn't be going away.

It hadn't stopped him from leaving the hospital back then.

It wouldn't stop him now.

He gripped the silvery rod of his abandoned IV pole, watched his knuckles turn white around it, watched his warped reflection elongate as he drew it close, his face appearing ghost-like, twisted and insignificant.

The constant low ringing in his ears had become a hum. A mumble. A mix of phantom voices tiptoeing over his eardrums.

_I told you not to let him out of your sight. _

_We are a family. _

_Dean, I'd do anything for you._

_Dad, you're scaring me._

John appeared in flames in the corner of his vision. A flash of amber and shadow. Dean bowed his head and scrunched his eyes closed to make him go away. He gripped the pole tighter, and restarted his own mantra. _Come on, Dean. Come on, come on, come on._

He sniffed deep, stretched his eyes wide—saw no John—and breathed. He dragged the pole closer. Using it as a brace, he reached, blacking out his monitors one by one. Leaning back, releasing the pole, he peeled his connections away.

The oxygen tube was last.

With a last deep breath, he stripped it clumsily off his nose and slid forward from the bed, groaning aloud when he stumbled on his feet. The cold linoleum against his pale toes made his leg hairs stand on end. He clamped his lips shut and darted his eyes to the door, expecting an alarm to sound. Expecting a nurse, a doctor, or Bobby, to come charging in with strength and disapproval Dean wouldn't have the energy to fight.

_But I will_.

He clenched his teeth and his hands, held his breath and waited.

He was met by silence.

Easing air from his lungs, he shuffled forward, one arm hugged close to his chest, free hand balanced on the wall.

_One foot in front of the other_.

Whatever Sam had been doing with the sage oil on his head… Dean hoped it worked, hoped it slowed the curse and held off the next injury long enough for Dean to do what he needed to.

He grabbed at his memories from the previous year, ticked off all the injuries that had occurred since Jessica's death. He tried to remember what'd happened after he'd been healed in Nebraska. The crazy back-woods family with the hot metal poker, or that Max kid psychically throwing him into a wall. He wasn't sure.

It probably didn't matter. If another injury hit him now, he was screwed.

* * *

Bobby's arms were folded, road blocking the highway. A hazy tower seesawing side to side. "Where exactly did you think you were going, boy?"

"Bobby," Dean breathed. He slumped his elbows over the armrests of the chair Bobby'd put him into. He'd made it into everything but his jacket and shoes. The hospital had cut his t-shirt in half, but he'd found the button-down intact. It itched against his skin.

He closed his mouth and flicked his gaze around Bobby to the door.

"Not a chance, kid." The arms stayed folded.

Dean swallowed. Bobby moved forward and Dean flinched, body locking, head jerking. A recoil of pain trembled through him. He bit hard on his raw lip.

Bobby froze, hands spreading wide, eyes confused. "Easy, Dean," he said, voice low and gruff and more careful than Dean had heard it before.

Dean shook his head tightly. He flexed his fingers against the sharp corners of his chair, gripping tight, and felt the buzzing of voices rise in his ears. He tilted his head up. "Where's Sam?"

Bobby stared. After a stuttered second, his arms dropped. He breathed out heavily, reaching up to adjust his cap. All of a sudden, he looked weary and old, lines appearing on his face Dean had never noticed before. "Sam's alright," he said. "He just went to check a few leads."

"What leads?"

Bobby's eyes danced towards the hospital bed, to the monitors, and back to Dean, like he was trying to figure out how to reattach them. He tugged at the rim of his hat, like he wasn't sure if he should leave it on, or take it off.

"Bobby, _where's_ my brother?"

The hat came off, fisted in one of Bobby's hands. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

The next sigh was deeper. "No. I don't." He glanced heavily at Dean. "When I got back from the police station, he had that look in his eye, like he was onto something. Said he had an idea. Said he wanted me to stay with you, and just took off." Bobby shook his head, rubbing absently at his jaw. "I tried to get him to tell me more, but, you know how he gets. More of damn _John Winchester_ in him than…"

Dean lifted his chin abruptly, felt his body stiffen, the low mumbles in his ears went completely silent. "Yeah."

Bobby turned his head to Dean, eyes puzzled. The lines on his face deepened further. He set his cap carefully back on his head and refolded his arms. "Dean," he said, then paused. "Ah, hell, kid, Sam ain't off selling his soul."

The burn in Dean's eyes was instant. He snapped them closed to hide the water.

Bobby's presence loomed closer. A moment later, a hand settled, warm and dry on the back of Dean's neck. "He _ain't_, Dean."

Dean jerked his head, felt heat in his cheeks and a hitch in his chest.

Bobby's hand gripped down and didn't move.

Dean worked his mouth open. "Last time I was in the hospital… _Every_ time I've been in the hospital…"

…_someone dies to get me out._

He opened his eyes, staring into Bobby's face.

The hand squeezed harder on his neck, giving him a gentle shake. "Not this time, Dean."

Dean closed his eyes again, forcing the pounding of his heart to settle, forcing saliva into his suddenly dry mouth. "Then where is he?"

* * *

tbc

* * *

Okay, so, yeah, short emo chapter, I know (facepalm). The plot does actually advance in the chapter to come…I swear.


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